NEW REALITIES
OF SPORTS LEAVE HIM ITCHING FOR DAYS GONE BY

I have a nit, actually a helmet full of nits, to pick with the great American pastime as it’s played today.

As cool winter days lengthen toward spring, my 4-year-old grandson, like many SoCal kids, is beginning his career in organized baseball.

Before pitchers and catchers report to spring training, the nation’s real bonus babies car-pool to their first practices where they meet their coaches and learn baseball’s fine points.

Like which arm (and leg) to throw with.

For some two years, ever since he could stand upright, Austin has been training for the banner day when he takes the field with his 3-foot-tall teammates.

He regularly takes B.P. in the back yard, grooving his left-handed swing under his father’s and mother’s playful (but fundamentally sound) supervision. With startling power, Austin can tattoo any ball that’s slowly pitched, let alone one that’s sitting like a seamed cantaloupe on a rubber tee. And with his right-handed delivery, he can produce chin music worthy of a Mozartian child prodigy. (His glove work, well, that’s a work in progress with 4-year-old hands.)

Despite Austin’s manifest skills, his father wonders whether he might be a little too young for this rite of passage into boyhood.

After all, Austin’s father started Pinto T-ball at the relatively ancient age of 7, wearing the standard issue of T-shirt (with Harry’s Coffee Shop stenciled on the front), matching baseball hat, faded jeans and Keds.

Before the Reagan-era tryouts, my Canadian wife and I, new to youth baseball, fretted that, despite countless hours of throwing and fielding on the street, he might not be good enough to make a team, or if he did, he’d not start in the infield, the shimmering object of his desire.

In retrospect, our anxiety was hilariously misspent.

Though not a particularly big kid, he was assigned the crucial position of first base because he could dig out any ball thrown in his direction.

After a season of practices, games and pizza dinners, he started as the second baseman and leadoff hitter on the league’s All-Star team, staying with the game through high school.

Like a lucky rainbow, baseball arched over our lives, lending a sense of direction and color. As a college going-away present, his mother stitched together all his team T-shirts and jerseys into a multicolored quilt, a comforting souvenir of our lives under the same roof.

So it’s as natural as Ted Williams’ lefty swing that Austin follow his father onto the base paths.

Still, I have to scratch my head at how T-ball’s sartorial fashion has changed in the last 30 years.

I can’t quite process a 4-year-old clattering around in his brand-new cleats. Yes, Nike cleats — and baseball pants. (Batting gloves, I take it, are optional.)

This full monty of regalia must be good for the sports-industrial complex. But is it not over the top?

Consider this: As a condition of playing in his Los Angeles league, Austin has to bring his own personal batting helmet.

Now I’m not an old baseball hand, far from it. If I had my way, every child in America would play tennis and/or run cross-country.

But no matter how I break it down, I can’t comprehend why a 4- or 5-year-old hitting off a tee ever needed a helmet to whack the ball and run toward first — or, as I’ve seen a couple of times, third.

Is it possible that a foul ball would hit the batter on the head? Really?

Or are we worried about an errant throw as he’s running the base paths? (In which case you’d think the fielders should also be wearing helmets. After all, they’re the targets. This isn’t dodge ball, is it?)

Even if you concede that there’s some helmet rationale, I have to ask: Why does each pint-size player need his own helmet?

Does no one care about money anymore?

Every team I coached (all of which involved pitching) had a couple of battered helmets in the sack with the practice balls and bats. Kids brought their own gloves, of course, and sometimes cool aluminum bats they shared with teammates, but helmets?

I was scratching my head over this until my wife dragged me into the 21st century of parenting.

Head lice.

Evidently, the bloodsuckers and their eggs, commonly known as nits, can be transmitted in helmets.

It’s a brave (or more aptly, fearful) new world on the diamonds.

What about insect sprays in the helmets? I wondered. (These days, lice are thought to be resistant, I’m told.)

What about wearing baseball caps underneath the helmets? (Too low-tech, I guess. Or uncool.)

Stop the codgery cross-examining, my wife tells me.

You know nothing about lice, how frustrating they can be. The helmets are cheap, less than $20. Get over it!

Nevertheless, I grumble about the antiseptic cushioning of contemporary life and yearn for the simpler, dirtier days that are going, going, gone.

I can still, but barely, see our baseball-loving son in jeans and Keds, as blithe as a summer day.